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Against My Better Judgment

  • Writer: Yael Magal
    Yael Magal
  • Jan 17
  • 6 min read

Updated: Jan 19

I don’t trust my opinions as a stand-alone proposition. I have a human brain, a human memory (very buggy feature), and a mixed bag of known and unknown biases that will always be a work in progress.

Daniel Kahneman laid this out clearly when he explained how easily we buy into our own bias and call it “feel.” As he put it: “We’re blind to our blindness. We have very little idea of how little we know. We’re not designed to know how little we know.” 

Comforting, right?

Actually, yes. Because once we acknowledge those limits, take responsibility for our own faults, we gain something useful: the option not to be led blindly by our assumptions. We can learn to separate thoughts, feelings and impressions from evidence, and dismiss our conviction vanity. We can learn to stop confusing human confidence with truth and reality.


I recognize the kind of animal we are and work from what biology and behavior science actually support, not what happens to feel convincing or emotionally satisfying in the moment. I value experience when it produces observations that can be tested, compared, and repeatedly validated. Otherwise, it’s an opinion. A thesis--At best. Interesting? maybe. Reliable? not yet.

I trust methods built on verifiable information you can apply in real situations, test and retest, and expect to behave consistently. Methods you can revise, correct, and improve; Not someone’s confident thought wrapped in a good story.


Here’s the logic that consistently holds up in horse training: much of our communication relies on pressure–release. The release is the reward--we all know to say these words. What sits underneath them is the learning process itself. Timing isn’t a “nice-to-have” detail. It’s the mechanism.


From what we understand about learning and neural association, the moment relief follows a behavior is what builds the connection. Unfortunately for all of us living in relatively tiger-free environments, biological systems are quicker to wire associations around threat and discomfort than around safety and ease. That’s a feature, not a bug. It kept animals alive.


What that means in training is simple and unforgiving: excessive pressure, poor timing, or asking more than the horse can mentally process will create habits faster than clarity will. In kindergarten terms, it’s easier to destroy than to build. The upside is that precise, well-timed release, repeated consistently and then maintained, can form a confident, balanced mind that’s capable of handling increasing complexity without defaulting to fear or confusion.


This isn’t just philosophical. Equitation science is blunt about it. Delayed release can reduce the likelihood of the desired response. Poor timing can slide into inadvertent punishment. Studies examining tension and release timing have measured changes in response latency, behavior, and posture. Yes, I read those papers. Voluntarily. (Citations below, if you’re curious.)


Horses deserve to be taught the language properly, by accurate hands, legs, and minds who are clear enough to teach it and be handled by humans that are striving to educate themselves into being the best communicators they can be for them in this unequal partnership. It's the least we can do on our part.


As I write about how these ideas show up in my professional world, it’s worth saying they didn’t start or end with horses or my training program. The horses just make the consequences visible.


We all want to be great, preferably right away. But what lasts is built through method, not urgency. Errors and failures, uncomfortable as they are, aren’t something to hide or punish. They’re a necessary part of exploration, innovation, and the effort required to level up. Treated properly, they become information that tells you exactly how to adjust and move forward.


So I don’t want to judge based only on my own collection of experiences. I want to be smarter and far more efficient than that. I want to lean on the accumulated intelligence that’s been built through decades of serious thinking, trial and error, and repeated testing. Work that’s asked far more questions than I might think to ask, failed in productive ways, and found answers (or more questions). I want as many smart, rigorous minds on my side of the work as possible.


Over the years, I’ve read and listened to many thinkers and scientists, spanning long-established work and newer voices in philosophy, psychology, and the behavioral sciences. Across fields, they share a similar posture: observing closely, testing assumptions, questioning norms, and revising ideas when reality doesn’t cooperate. They wrestle with meaning as well as mechanics, and I try to take what holds up and apply it where it actually matters. These are a few of the thinking voices I keep on my “school of thought” team.



Moral virtue comes about as a result of habit. [Nicomachean Ethics]

Aristotle nailed this over two millennia ago. We become what we repeatedly practice. Habit shapes character, ethics, and standards. Potential without structure is unreliable. What matters is what holds up, not a momentary glimpse.

Being wrong doesn’t make you weak. It makes you a learner. [Think Again]

Finding the right fit for the right nuance matters. Progress comes from acknowledging flaws honestly and rethinking direction rather than defending what isn’t working. The goal is to design systems that make it easier to do the right thing.

Practice isn’t the thing you do once you’re good. It’s the thing you do that makes you good. [Outliers]

I’m drawn to patterns in human behavior and to how quickly we build stories around them. Those stories often arrive before we’ve accounted for context, incentives, or unintended consequences. The work is resisting neat explanations and staying curious without letting a good narrative override accuracy or ethics.

We are very good at making up reasons for our actions, but these reasons are often not the real ones. [Predictably Irrational]

Irrationality is predictable. Inconsistency isn’t a moral failure, it’s a signal that something in the system is poorly designed or misplaced. I’ve learned to look for the roots of behavior rather than judge the outcome, asking what incentives, pressures, or constraints are shaping decisions beneath the surface.

Action isn’t just the effect of motivation; it’s also the cause of it. [Motivation Is Bullshit]

Brutal honesty is a language I’m comfortable speaking. I value the rejection of forced positivity and the focus on responsibility, values, and tradeoffs. Not because I want things to sound grim, but because facing reality and getting clear on what actually matters is what leads to progress. Not everything can be optimized or fixed, and pretending otherwise creates more confusion than momentum. Where I diverge is tone. I’m less interested in provocation and more interested in consistency.

Proofs: XKCD

Randall Munroe’s work resonates with my preference for clarity over impressiveness. Breaking systems down to first principles, explaining them plainly, and respecting the intelligence of the reader matters to me. Precision without ego is something I value deeply.

The truth is, science is not value-free. Good science is the product of our valuing evidence, and logical consistency, and parsimony, and other intellectual virtues. And if you don’t value those things, you can’t participate in a scientific conversation. [Facts & Values: Clarifying the Moral Landscape]

Keeping my ideology, ethics, and moral responsibility in check matters to me. Human choices have consequences. I value intellectual honesty and accountability, particularly when they’re uncomfortable.

The key to success is consistency, not intensity.

Huberman’s work reinforced my respect for biology, recovery, and limits. Mental and physical systems break when physiology and biology is ignored. Sustainable progress depends on understanding how bodies and nervous systems actually function, not how we wish they would.

Subjective confidence in a judgment is not a reasoned evaluation of the probability that this judgment is correct. Confidence is a feeling, which reflects the coherence of the information and the cognitive ease of processing it. It is wise to take admissions of uncertainty seriously, but declarations of high confidence mainly tell you that an individual has constructed a coherent story in his mind, not necessarily that the story is true.

Taking human limitations seriously means recognizing that experience and good intentions don’t eliminate bias or error, especially under pressure. I don’t rely on intuition to carry outcomes. I build systems that assume mistakes will happen and use feedback and repetition to correct and stay on track. Consistency matters not because people are careless, but because judgment is fragile.

A shaky understanding early on will lead to complete bewilderment later.

Khan Academy is a genuine educational treasure for anyone who loves to learn. He builds learning modals that allow anyone access to knowledge from foundational concepts to mastery levels, layer by layer, through logical progression and well understood structure.

References

Training Mindset

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